741.642 (Children's Books)

UW-Madison hosts an annual Edible Book Festival where groups or individuals make representations of books out of edible materials. A few of my colleagues at Memorial were directly responsible for putting the festival together and I decided that I should probably create an entry for the festival.

I had a tricky time choosing a book to work with - I was torn between two different books - but my students at the elementary schools where I work and my fellow SLIS grads helped me decide to go with my favorite picture book of all time: "We Are In a Book!" by Mo Willems.

I decided to go a little punny with my cake and change the phrase "We Are In a Book" that is shouted by Elephant and Piggie to "We Are On a Cake" and my little punny turn-o'-phrase ended up winning me a prize! I won the "Funniest/Punniest Cake" award and took 2nd place in the People's Choice vote!

My cake also became famous, getting coverage on Eating in Madison A to Z and I was quoted in a UW Library News & Events article written by a fellow SLISer! Oooh, and a Flickr set of all the entries! Without further ado, the cake!

779 (Photographic images)

So, this isn't a post about cake (there'll be one this week yet, promise), but it is about my kitchen, or more specifically, about my refrigerator  Like many fridges, mine has collected a plethora of magnets, photos, save the dates, and other various pieces of paper. It looked something like this:

Before

Now it looks something like this:

After

After seeing this post from A Diamond in the Stuff on Pinterest, I thought I should try a fridge photo gallery of my own.

I went to the Dollar Store and bought 7 dollars worth of picture frames and a dollar worth of glue.

4x6 frames without glass and back

I removed the glass from the frames and the stands from the cardboard backer.

"Leg" removed from backer

 I then gave the picture frames a spray coat of plastic primer, and then a coat of spray paint.

Primer coat

Spray painted frames

Once the frames were dry, I put the glass back into the frames and mounted pictures. Once the pictures were firmly inside the frames, I glued magnets onto the backs of the picture frames.

Magnets added

I then put the pictures back on the fridge:

After

In my opinion, a THOUSAND times better - the frames look nice on the fridge and will make it easy for me to switch out photos when I want to put up new ones. Leaving a little bit of space blank let me rotate out new pictures of my nephew and other updates, such as new save the dates and appointment reminders.

745.926 (Three-dimensional arrangements for special occasions)

My brother-in-law is a Marine and he and his lovely bride were supposed to be married this July, but being a part of the Corps, my brother-in-law found out that he'll likely be shipping out sometime in September. This meant that the wedding that was supposed to happen in July had to happen sooner... and the two of them went from having 5 months to plan to having 5 weeks to plan and I suddenly became a florist!

I figured I'd post pictures of the bouquets and centerpieces. The bride ordered the flowers from Costco and had them delivered to my door the Wednesday before the wedding. They arrived in boxes that looked like this:

I had to de-thorn and de-leaf all of the roses (300 stems) and make sure that they were placed in water. With so many different stems, they went in 5 gallon pails and coolers to get transported to the bride's parents' house to be made into bouquets. 

It was the coldest 4.5 hour car trip the hubs and I have EVER had. The flowers had to be kept cool in order to keep them fresh and in good shape for the wedding. Looking back now, we should have had all the stems delivered Thursday, but we weren't sure on the time it would take for the flowers to fully open.

An afternoon was spent making 3 bridesmaid bouquets, the bride's bouquet, and 6 small table centerpieces. We picked up baby's breath the morning of making the bouquets before all the ladies (myself included) went to have our nails done. The bride and I then hit up JoAnn Fabrics to pick up ribbon and bouquet 'bling'.

While I'm not a professional florist (a professional florist would probably give me shit about my bouquet making skills), the flowers looked great for the day of the wedding and met all of the bride's expectations! Whoot! Here are the pictures of the flowers the day of the wedding. The professional photographers captured them much better, but I'm just glad they held up for the day.

I know it's not cake, but enjoy!

Bride's Bouquet

Bouquet 'Bling'

Bridesmaid's Bouqets (black centered gerbs for maid of honor)

Bride and Groom (as seen through centerpiece)

Table Centerpieces

641.568 (Cooking for special occasions)

A SUPER special occasion just happened - and that would be my husband's 30th birthday! My parents stopped down to celebrate with us and in order to better celebrate his birthday, I baked a cake and decorated it with my FAVORITE, SUPER SIMPLE type of decoration - the rosette!

6" layer cake (white) with buttercream icing

Having seen the technique a thousand and a half times on Pinterest, I decided it was time to try the all rosette cake cover for myself.

Ombre technique inside and out the cake

To stack, frost, and completely cover the 6" cake in rosettes took about 10-15 minutes and produces a BEAUTIFUL cake. I used the ombre technique in green (since it's my husband's favorite color) to make the inside just as pretty as the out. There's a thin layer of buttercream between each of the cake layers as well.

Green ombre using buttercream

I am completely in love with this cake technique and will DEFINITELY be using it again in the future!